Woese's progenote hypothesis

Btw, anglagard posted this paper originally, but is notably absent. http://EvC Forum: Randman's analysis of scholarly papers -->EvC Forum: Randman's analysis of scholarly papersWhy is that?My own experiences suggests that contrary to all the blather that their critics don't understand evolutionary theory, very often the opposite is the case. The critics do understand it, which is why they reject it, and the propoents are often guilty of the ignorance they accuse others of.

I thought that lithodid man (it was him, i think) used urkingdom for the eukaryotic kingdoms. stupid changing of classification. I'm more familiar with the term domain for bacteria, archaebacteria, and eukaryote.apparently Woese, and you all in this thread, are using kingdom as I would domain.urgh.

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All a man's knowledge comes from his experiences

from what I understand, this paper is old. From what I understand, a creature such as his progenote would have evolved by something already stated on this thread, and I think it was differential reproductive success (actually, that's not the term. close, but not quite. either Lithodid or modulus used the term for how they evolve).
what this means, is that they evolved by known means. So no, known evolutionary processed can account for it. isn't his progenote the more simpler form? especially if the genotype and phenotype aren't so tightly linked.oh, and they are still linked to some degree, so natural selection would still play a part in their evolution, as I understand.

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All a man's knowledge comes from his experiences

quote:

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his progenote the more

simpler form? especially

if the genotype and phenotype aren't so tightly linked.

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Oh Yea, here we go................Well, the notion of "form" would be MORE complicated even if the object denoted was less IF the genotype and phenotype were less linked than any notes"". Symbolic logicians seem not to worry about this stuff and neither did Wolfram but I think that a junk yard would rather look more like a tornado than a frog.This is the *price* that empiricism PAYS and it has sold it self out to Goethe's ya knew who.....The *reason* the form connoted is not simpler is because a potentially infinte event, the NAMING of a cell or cellular organism, is doubly (once with 'type' and then with the 'note') is doubly finitized on aposterori purpose. I think this is not correct and but is all the university environment tends to say is higher or promote.

What known means? Please show me where a progenote is and how it evolves, and how natural selection works if the phenotype is not precisely linked to the genotype.And why is when one of you evos here posts a paper, demanding it be read, and then I start a thread on it, you guys start backing off of it saying it is an old paper? Is the data in the paper right or wrong? Old or not, the issue is the data, right? Woese uses a more precise term and says the progenote is not a more rudimentary form of either a collage of the 3 kingdoms or one of the 3 kingdoms. You get that point yet?

Woese did indeed say that KNOWN evolutionary processes cannot account for the 3 kingdoms arising, but his point is that the ToE is limited in this area and requires more research. Given the problems Woese produces a hypothesis about progenotes. What's the problem?Again, just because there are known limitations with the ToE doen't invalidate it, especially if the theory is very successful in other ares.A theory is never "proved" for all time, it is simply strengthened by the accumulation of evidence. Your criticism here doesn't detract from the wealth of evidence already gathered in support of the ToE.You make the crucial error of assuming that a gap in ToE knowledge automatically "proves" your defualt postion against it. It does not.Edited by RickJB, : No reason given.Edited by RickJB, : No reason given.

I think this is part of the problem. Woese's objection is to the 'Darwinian' form of vertical evolution with novelty arising over succesive generations and spreading though differential reproductive success of progeny.In Woese's world by contrast we have communities of proteinaceous protocells developing from a precellular aggregate of functional and structural nucleic acids. These protocells have no genome as we might recognise it but rather a shifting ensemble of genetic elements. It is like a comunity of bacteria with nothing but short elements of plasmid DNA. So rather than 1 genomic copy of a gene a progenote protocell may have hundreds of copies with highly variable sequence, and these plasmid like sequences can be transferred between protocells leading to massive horizontal gene transfer. Woese himself suggests such an evolutionary scheme might best be described as Lamarkcian.There is no barrier to mechanisms as simple as mutation and natural selection, only to higher order mechanisms associated specifically with 'Darwinian' vertical descent. How does natural selection work in such a world where the metabolism can shift as the genetic community changes and the swapping of characteristics and traits is and everyday occurrence? The obvious answer is of course that natural selection is operating not on the progenote protocell itself but on the various genetic elements being modified and traded around the progenote communities. When the linkage is poor there will be much lower biological specificity and proteins may well be more structural than functional in many cases. Whatever functional proteins there were would need to have more leeway for amino acid changes than we see in many modern highly specific active sites. As long as there remains some linkage between the gene and the protein product there is a target for selection, the better the linkage the more power there will be in selection.Woese himself has some research showing that within such a community there will be a trend to converge on a more universal transcriptional code (Vetsigian et al., 2006), tightening up the loose linkage between gene and protein product and allowing for greatly increased biological specificity. Woese proposes three phases of development of transcription and cellular life.1- A period of weak communal evolution where the transcriptional code is loose.There follows a selection between communities for a common code allowing the rapid sharing of beneficial ensembles of genes by HGT.2- Strong communal evolution: a universal translational code allows for the rapid dissemination of traits, the selection of beneficial ensembles and the production of more complex ensembles due to the potential for improved stability and specificity of the protein products. Eventually the complexity is such that the 2nd communal phase gives way to...3- Individual, vertical or 'Darwinian' evolution much as we are familiar with today.Woese suggests that the origin of each distinct kingdom is the product of such a switch from the communal to the Darwinian types of evolution. That it is not a rudimentary form of the currently extant kingdoms does not mean it was not simpler, just that it was quite different in nature.TTFN,WK

Which has been my point all along. He doesn't see how observed processes can account for the emergence of the 3 kingdoms. Which is what I've been saying as well.WK, you seem knowledgeable of Woese's idea here. What do you make of it personally? Do you think, despite not observing this theoritical and Lamarckian evolutionary process, that Woese is right, or not?What about the possibility that the 3 kingdoms just didn't share a common ancestor?

Isn't it all quite analogeous to the situation in cosmology?Extrapolation via current physics leads to (explains adequately) Big Bang/Expanding Universe cosmology but breaks down near the "beginning" where physics were wholy different.Extrapolation via current understanding of descent with modification and natural selection leads to (explains adequately) common descent but breaks down near the "beginning" where other processes were going on because 'life' was closer to pure chemistry.What is the problem here? Is cosmology and/or the current understanding of physics maybe total bollocks because of what we don't know for sure yet about the very beginning?

let me ask you this. if you saw three kids. they all have brown hair, brown eyes, and . . . blue (no, green skin ). and several other characteristics in common.would you guess, that maybe, just maybe their related in some way? or that all three of them are not related in any way? which is more probable?
and you know what, bacteria, archaebacteria, and eukaryotes share some very basic, important characteristics that lead us to this conclusion that we share a common ancestor (never mind the DNA sequencing, or whatever it is they do also--i'm no geneticist, so I generally don't understand what exactly it is their doing)oh, and I'm sure that even if you did somehow manage to prove common descent to be wrong, ToE will be just fine. After all, evolution is more about natural selection on organisms than about everyone being descended from a common ancestor.

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All a man's knowledge comes from his experiences

So he proposes his own hypothesis. Science at work. Again, what's the problem here?Message 81 awaits an answer.Edited by RickJB, : No reason given.

there isn't. randman just likes to think that "oh my god, someone is challenging evolution, and they're a scientist!" "I guess that menas that there's a massive, gaping hole that evolution has that must mean it's wrong!" "yippee, yahoo, we're saved, we're all saved!"it seems that he might not get that science changes, unlike religion.
and that science must change as our understanding gets better. we find problems with the original stuff from new things we learn, we change the original to work with the new. that's how we moved from geocentric to heliocentric, that's how we moved from newton's theory of gravity to einstein's theory of relativity, that's how we moved from "birds are colorful so that we can enjoy God's work" to "birds are colorful for purposes of mating, camoflauge (probably misspelled too)"religion, on the other hand, never has to change. it's explanation's are fixed in not only God did it, but in the bible (or whatever other relgious text you might use). Noah's ark will always be Noah's ark. Saul's meeting with God (or angel? unfamiliar with details here) will always be that. there is no further understanding to be learned, there is no change in the major doctrines of any religion. it is used to explain the world in a supernatural way, not a natural way.which is why science has to change as we learn more. because we further figure out how nature works, and our orginal models jsut don''t cut it. but, God did it covers everything in the past, present, and future. all mysteries solved. it's a miracle, mystery solved. it's god's will, mystery, or question, solved. god did it, mystery, or question, solved.besides, how many christians are going to give up that Jesus really did become ressurrected. Or what about the muslims changing that rule about never depict Mohamed, or the Jews and their kosher food and not eating pork?(sorry for any mischaracterizations of said person being charicturized (i know I spelled that one wrong))

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All a man's knowledge comes from his experiences

This is the kind of asinine, bogus, and frankly absurd comments so indicative of evo proponents that remind me of the sort of thinking resulting from cults and such. Unbelievable, but totally expected!

Which hypothesis is the subject of this thread, which you have little substantive comment on.Why not actually discuss the thread topic, you know, Woese' hypothesis? the details on why he thinks gradualistic evolution cannot explain the data? that sort of thing.

The problem, which you steadfastly refuse to deal with even though it the topic of this thread, is that the differences rule out that they share a common ancestor, if that ancestor was a genote, or at least according to Woese.So it's like more like this. I used to know a black guy with green eyes. So if I were to see him and a Caucasian, really pale guy, with green eyes, I wouldn't go, hey, they must have the same parents because despite sharing similarities, they share enough differences to suggest they don't have the same parents.Understand? So does that mean creationism and ID are forms of the ToE since they too acknowledge natural selection is a process within nature? Seems to me you guys like to resort to the ole bait and switch routine, moving the goalposts and what-not. Evolutionary theory IS defined as common descent, but then you say, nah, evolution is just natural selection, but if if it is just natural selection without common descent, then there has to be another mechanism for the appearance of the major taxa, right?